The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is not an imaginative film title, but at least we have a pretty good idea what the film is about. Detective Jung Tae-seok is a tough, cynical cop who has a personal vendetta again powerful gangster Jang Dong-soo. He puts 2 and 2 together when investigating a random killing of guy found stabbed to death in the back of his car. He decides this murder has a similar M.O. to a couple of older crimes in other towns and decides there is a serial murderer to be caught. His wild theory is not taken seriously, even when Jang Dong-soo is attacked when driving home one night. The gangster fights back and survives the attack, thinking he'd been attacked by a hitman sent by a rival starts a gang war and also sends his men out to look for the assassin. The cop notices that both cars had been hit from behind by a white car and realises that Jang Dong-soo is the only person to have seen the serial murderer's face. Eventually, the erstwhile enemies join forces to hunt down the killer who has become more reckless, killing more frequently and not changing location like he used to.

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is a stylish South Korean action crime thriller. The cops are unkept, the police station dingy and crowded, while the gangsters are stylish, impeccably dressed and vicious. While the presentation is stylish, the scenario and plot are as original as the title. It is best to go along for the ride rather than look for novelty or a deeper message. But this is no different from many Hollywood films that do well at the box office. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil stands up well alongside those films.

I think that the downfall in The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is the serial killer - "the Devil". Surely the idea of the uber-villain should be confined to cinematic and TV history. The idea that a single man (and it is almost always a man) who can out-think and outmanoeuvre the cops, often depicted as planning things years in advance, setting up elaborate one-off schemes and having limitless resources as his disposal yet having a secret room where he pins pictures of his victims and future victims to the wall along with newspaper clippings and decorated with his primitive art that lays bare his inner thoughts and as a shrine to his evil crimes is completely ridiculous. The serial killer in The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is a ruthless, knife obsessed loner, whose main defence is his anonymity and that his kills have been in different police districts, with long gaps in time between them. Once he starts to kill more frequently and staying in the same area, he should have ceased to be the formidable opponent he was built up to be.

The best scene is a throwaway scene where we are shown a potential female victim only to have our expectations amusingly upended in a unique insight into the idea that one of the protagonists may have a life outside work.

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Ian rating 3/5

The World Is Yours

This year's French comedy is the crime caper The World is Yours which, strangely, has two French titles Le monde est à toi and Le monde ou rien. If you want a nice, polite, politically correct French farce you should move along, there is nothing to see here.

Our protagonist longs to go straight and dreams of opening a Mr. Freeze franchise in North Africa and owning a small house with an outdoor pool. Unfortunately, his family and friends are the criminal underworld of the local Parisian housing estate and his career so far has been committing, aiding and abetting crime. Even when he thinks he has saved enough for a down payment on the franchise his mother's gambling habit intervenes. So he reluctantly accepts the job of driving to Spain to pick some drugs from a Scottish drug lord. Accompanied by his mother's dopy ex-boyfriend, 2 stoned gangsters both called Mohamed and a gold digging semi-girlfriend what could possibly go wrong? And who are you going to call when things do go wrong? Well, mummy of course (played in top scenery chewing form by Isabelle Adjani).

While not the funniest or craziest film at the festival, it has a flare that is missing in the rest of the films I saw in this year's festival. Reminiscent of both Tarantino and Sexy Beast, The World is Yours has us rooting for the underdog as he digs himself deeper and deeper into trouble.

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Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

American Animals

Psychologist Nigel Latta says "teenagers are not right in the head" and this is especially true of teenage boys. American Animals gives you an idea what it would be like if, instead of driving their cars too fast, or drinking too much and doing something foolish, some teenagers you know decide to steal some very valuable books from their university library, sell them on the black market and make millions.It's a  hybrid of a morality tale, a tale of an elaborate uni student prank, and a bank-robbery film. 

A dramatic reconstruction of the events performed by actors is interspersed with the real-life perpetrators recounting what happened and the real-life parents recounting how they felt about it.They're well-presented and articulate and still relatively young (early thirties) and so the story has a kind of gruesome fascination - the archetypal American student goes bad. They did succeed in stealing the books but were later apprehended and served prison sentences as a reuslt. They are universally penitent and I guess the film is to show you that not all crime is committed by hardened criminals and people from under-privileged backgrounds - sometimes it's committed by misguided ordinary people who crave excitement, who have doubts while they're doing it and planning it and feel almost instantaneous regret.

At times American Animals has the feel of a movie that you'd be shown at high school to put you off committing crime but fortunately the entertainment value is greater than that.

Anne's rating 3/5 Victoria's rating 3/5